Show of hands (or not) who here knew Al Baghdadi's name?

[karynnj]

14. I knew his name

I followed the detailed effort by the Obama administration to create both the coalition to fight ISIS and to push the Iraqi government to become sufficiently inclusive to enable them to provide the governance of areas in Iraq won back. Obama made an initial speech that laid out what Iraq needed to do before we would help them, and there were two (covered on CSPAN I think) UN sessions as we were assembling allies - one including foreign ministers, led by Kerry, the other led by Obama included many leaders of countries.

In addition to that, there were many articles about ISIS - most describing Al Baghdadi..

I AGREE that few would have heard or known the name. The media in 2014-2016 when Obama led a world wide effort to intelligently fight ISIS did not consider it interesting. It was not shock and awe which they love to cover. It was meetings of the coalition that often were reported to discuss how to demine, rebuild and to have local people able to provide good governance to areas won back.

It is commendable that Obama was more concerned with doing this in a way that would be more likely to lead to stability in the area than to quickly have military victories that would last only as long as we stayed there. Not to mention, the small footprint of the US and EU meant that the local people were the key part of winning back their land. With Trump, much of that was thrown away in the last few weeks as he betrayed the Kurds. In both Syria and Iraq, it was Kurdish fighters who did the lion's share of the work.

If we ever have to go back in, I doubt we can do what Obama did. Why would anyone trust us?